I have added 166 transcriptions from images of the Massachusetts vital records on the NEHGS website. The count so far is 520 Sacket/Sackett records transcribed out of a total of 648. The following years are completed: 1841–47, 1850, 1852–55, 1857–84, 1886–93. Some of the gaps are caused by poor quality images of very faint originals and I am waiting for some of these to be checked by the very helpful NEHGS staff.The Adopt-a-newspaper research project has got off to a flying start and we have a splendid total of more than 400 transcriptions in the first month. If you have not already volunteered for this project, please do check the newspapers page on the website and consider whether you could help. States on the Library of Congress Chronicling America not yet spoken for include: CA, DC, NE, UT, WA. All these have many references to Sacketts, doubtless including much hitherto undiscovered family information.Thurmon's database is also updated on the website this month. The database contains an amazing 34,053 people. For privacy reasons not all these are published on the website (there is a cut-off for those born after 1920), but the number published still tops 27,000. Of the total in the database, the number of Sackett descendants is about 19,700; there are 9,500 spouses of Sackett descendants; and the remainder of about 4,800 are ancestors of spouses, mostly their parents.

12 January 2010

The Sackett Family Association is launching a project to research and transcribe thousands of newspaper articles relating to members of the Sackett family.

Association members are invited to volunteer to help with this work. Details of the project, together with a list of volunteers, and research results, are all on the Association website at adopt-a-newspaper project.

This major research project will add considerably to our knowledge of the history and genealogy of the Sacketts, and is seen as a way of adding flesh to the bare bones of birth-marriage-death data.

07 January 2010

Convener Kathy James has more news on the preparations for the 2010 Sackett reunion in Portland, Oregon.See Reunion News #2, January 2010Visit the Reunion page on The Sackett Family Association website to see who else is planning to attend and let us know your intentions.